Marilynne Robinson on Christmas, Easter, and Religious Dread

I have a theory that the churches fill on Christmas and Easter because it is on these days that the two most startling moments in the Christian narrative can be heard again…

In other words, people come to church on major holidays not solely out of a sense of social and religious propriety, but because, at least subconsciously, those are the two days when we can be assured of hearing some Good News from the pulpit (as opposed to a spiritualized version of the instruction we hear from every other outlet, including the internal ones). She goes on to explain:

If we sometimes feel adrift from humankind, as if our technology-mediated life on this planet has deprived us of the brilliance of the night sky, the smell and companionship of mules and horses, the plain food and physical peril and weariness that made our great-grandparents’ lives so much more like the life of Jesus than any we can imagine, then we can remind ourselves that these stories have stirred billions of souls over thousands of years, just as they stir our souls, and our children’s. What gives them their power? They tell us that there is a great love that has intervened in history, making itself known in terms that are startlingly, and inexhaustibly, palpable to us as human beings. They are tales of love, lovingly enacted once, and afterward cherished and retold–by the grace of God, certainly, because they are, after all, the narrative of an obscure life in a minor province. Caesar Augustus was also said to be divine, and there aren’t any songs about him.

We here, we Christians, have accepted the stewardship of this remarkable narrative, though it must be said that our very earnest approach to this work has not always served it well…

I am the sort of Christian whose patriotism might be called into question by some on the grounds that I do not take the United States top be more beloved of God than France, let us say, or Russia, or Argentina, or Iran. I experience religious dread whenever I find myself thinking that I know the limits of God’s grace, since I am utterly certain it exceeds any imagination a human being might have of it. God does, after all, so love the world.

Another universalist? Or does she teach that God loves every sinner but some ineffectively? God’s love is not infinite. God only loves those for whom Christ died and they are the elect God gave to Christ (John 17) This is what the Westminster Confession teaches, and I agree with particular and effectual love. I assume your weekend speaker (Mike Horton) also agrees with the WCF that all for whom Christ died will be saved from God’s wrath by the just death of the incarnate Son.

Marilynne Robinson is an out-spoken Calvinist…not that it matters. All Robinson is saying here, it seems to me, is that God’s grace is larger than we can imagine. This is particularly powerful for those many people who, thinking they know the limits of God’s grace, assume that sinners such as them must be excluded.

It seems there are only two Jesuses left standing these days: (1) the hard-a Jesus who is the “no one comes to the Father except by me” theological stickler, and (2) the flower-child Jesus of the chilled out “unconditional love” variety. When I read the gospels and the revelation I have a hard time spotting either one. When it comes to the extent of God’s grace, I have come to the place of affirming that the grace that can reconcile us to God is only found in Jesus, but as to how far and by what means that grace extends, and how and if and to what extent some form of judgment also may be involved, I simply do not know. And, I think the Bible and the Creeds are providentially silent on those issues. As I read it, this is what this post is saying, or not saying, as well.

Well, I can imagine that Jesus Christ died for everybody, but He didn’t. But to say that Jesus died for some who will not be saved is to imagine less than what the Bible reveals about the reason and the intention for Christ’s death. I do know that Robinson continues to write favorably about Calvin (as she did in the Death of Adam) but not about what Calvin taught about the atonement and “double predestination”. With Barth, she wants to make a mystery and a tension instead of submitting to what the Bible clearly reveals and what Calvin taught.

I don’t so much object to a selective use of Calvin, but about being less than forthright about what we mean by God’s love. God loves those who will perish? NO. The Westminster Confession is not “providentially silent” on this issue. I would agree that there is a more dialectical approach in the 39 articles. But when you include the Arminians, the consistent Calvinist message tends to get excluded. http://www.ligonier.org/blog/did-jesus-suffer-wrath-father-all-sinners-or-just-elect/

I agree that the Westminster Confession is not providentially silent on this issue, and therein lies the problem with it. I am a cradle Presbyterian, raised on TULIPs, and it seems to me that the WC goes far beyond what is unambiguously found in Scripture on the issues of “limited atonement” and so-called “double predestination.” When Paul deals with this issue, it is in the form of a hypothetical question, not an assertion, and his response to the hypothetical is, in effect, “Even if that were so, God as God is not answerable to us for his inscrutable will.” Calvin, when one reads the whole of his work, has a more healthy respect for the mystery of God’s ultimate will when it comes to these thorny issues than the WC, in my pathetic little opinion anyway. The Apostles and Nicene Creeds say nary a word about who’s going where or why.

The truths in the Apostles Creed do not get to the crucial distinction between law and gospel that the folks at Mockingbird are rightly so concerned to address. Now unless we think that law/grace distinction and justification by imputation are merely information that shows that we are smarter than other folks, surely we need to know more gospel than we can find only in the Apostles Creed. Unless of course you want to become a Roman Catholic, why are you still so sectarian to think that the Reformation matters if you are content with only the Nicene creed?

Westminster Confession, Chapter 3: VI.
Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only.
Chapter 8, V.
The Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience, and sacrifice of himself, which he, through the eternal Spirit, once offered up to God, hath fully satisfied the justice of His Father; and purchased, not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, for all those whom the Father hath given unto him.
Hebrews 10:14
For by one offering, He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.

Unlike Sproul, many in the Calvin tradition now seem to be under the impression that they can teach “the indicative declaration of what Christ has accomplished” (Modern Reformation, September1999,p4) without addressing the question of the extent of the atonement. But the nature of Christ’s righteousness cannot be clearly taught without saying that only the sins of the elect were imputed to Christ.

If Christ bore the sins of every individual, but not each of them is saved, then Christ’s blood cannot be taught as that which actually satisfies the demands of God’s law in a “complete atonement” (p30). If the blood does not “set apart” the elect from the reprobate, then something unholy sinners do or decide is that which sets apart.

In the ambiguity resulting from the failure to talk about particular atonement, the propitiatory offering (Ephesians 5:2, 25-26) will continue to be seen by many “ evangelicals” as something offered to individual sinners, for them to accept or reject. In other words, the universal duty to believe the gospel (which with I agree, and the WCF teaches) will become a law which conditions salvation not on the cross but on the sinner.

But the Westminster Confession rightly describes the cross as an offering made to God. God has not introduced a new less strict law by which we may be saved. God has offered to God a righteousness that entitles each elect person to all the blessings of salvation, including the effectual call and faith in the true gospel.

I would not say that definite atonement is ‘the little point which the world and the devil are attacking” (p39). There is no need for Satan to attack a doctrine which is not not even being taught by most “Reformed” folks.

Why is this so? I think first of the “myth of the influence”. Perhaps we think that if we avoid the offense of the cross: (Gal 6:14–it saves, and it alone, and therefore all for whom Jesus died will be saved), we will be able to persuade those who condition salvation on themselves to talk more correctly about God or about election or the law/gospel antithesis.

But election and/or union which enables sinners to meet conditions to get in on the “alien righteousness” is NOT a biblical picture of election/union and certainly is not the gospel. It is the outside righteousness of the cross itself which is the condition which makes certain the salvation of the elect.

The above is why I left that Presbyterian cradle All I can say is that I am not the one who separates the sheep from the goats, God is, and I am not the one who does with the sheep and the goats whatever is done, ultimately, with them, God is…the same God who died saying forgive them for they are ignorant goats. This old and ignorant goat is thankful for that.

Not that it really matters, but I have a conversion story of my own. I used to be an universalist, and I used to support that judgment by saying that I made no judgement but was merely leaving it up to the inscrutable mystery of God. In that way, I claimed to be humble while proudly denying the clarity of what God had revealed. I made a claim that the Bible did not make—that God maybe loved everybody and would maybe save everybody.

Why do so many in the Calvin traidition preach about the “indicative done” in the context of “you” and never in terms of the Westminster
Confession: “for all those whom the Father has given the Son” ? Perhaps some of these folks really do see every baptized member of the
covenant community as one for whom Christ died. Surely these infants would not find salvation in the water unless they had first been
purchased by Christ!

But finally I do not think the problem is any ecclesial presupposition about the ‘you” being regenerate.. Those who disagree about water can
still confess together that only the elect are baptized by the Father into the death of Christ. Only those for whom Jesus died have a
righteousness which answers the demands of God’s law. Being “pastoral” gives no preacher the right to assure and comfort all his hearers that Christ will not be a judge to them. Acts 17:31 should warn us against talking about sovereign grace without talking about Christ’s death being the righteousness of God. Only the blood of Jesus Christ (not the preacher or the church o has (or has not) silenced the accusations of God’s law.

Obeying the gospel is not the condition of salvation, but a blessing made certain for the elect by the righteousness of Christ. It is not sure that “you” will be saved. Salvation is promised to all who believe the gospel of salvation conditioned on the blood alone. Salvation is not promised to those who have faith in their faith or their church. If the word of the church is universal atonement, that word is not true.

Our proper antithesis (not by works in us) will do no good if we “flinch at this one point”. If we do not confess particular atonement,
then the people who hear will not ultimately look outside themselves for the righteousness which pleases God. If Jesus Christ died for
everybody but only “enabled God” to save those who meet further conditions, then people will certainly look to themselves for the
difference between lost and saved.

The only way you can tell people that the gospel is “outside of you” is to tell them that the gospel they must believe to be saved excludes
this believing as the condition of salvation. The only condition of salvation for the elect is Christ’s death for the elect. No debated
language about “covenant” should be allowed to obscure this gospel truth. Unless we preach that Christ died only for the elect, we
encourage people to make faith into that little something” that makes the difference between life and death!

I am not looking for another discussion about Calvin and Luther on the extent of the atonement. I am not even looking for something
“classical” enough that we can influence many people to endorse. I am asking if we believe that the glory of God in the gospel means that
all for whom Christ died will certainly be saved. Or is that too “rationalistic” for us? Would that perhaps take the grace of God out
of the hands of the church and reserve it for the Father who has reserved a people for himself and given them to Christ? (Romans 11:4-6)
The glory of God does not depend on human decisions, and the gospel must not become a victim of “evangelical” law which in the name of
universal atonement conditions salvation on the sinner.

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[…] Marilynne Robinson on Christmas, Easter and Religious Dread: From Marilynne Robinson’s essay “Wondrous Love”, one of several collected in When I Was a Child I Read Books, here are the quotes I referenced at this past weekend’s conference: I have a theory that the churches fill on Christmas and Easter because it is on these days that the two most startling moments in the Christian narrative can be heard again… […]

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